In Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game, he explores the development of a contemplative Game that is played in the future by the scholars of Castalia. He tells us that the roots of the Game are in our present day.
In describing the game's history:
Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions.
While Hesse is never clear about the physical structure of the Game he uses many descriptive examples:
A reader who chanced to be ignorant of the Glass Bead Game might imagine such a Game pattern as rather similar to the pattern of a chess game, except that the significance of the pieces and the potentialities of their relationships to one another and their effect upon one another multiplied manyfold and an actual content must be ascribed to each piece, each constellation, each chess move, of which this move, configuration, and so on is the symbol.
One of the most important developments in the Game's history was the development a synthesis across disciplines:
...(Each discipline) played their Games according to their ingenious rules, but the Game had a special language and set of rules for every discipline and subdiscipline. It required half a century before the first step was taken toward spanning these gulfs.......They longed for philosophy, for synthesis. The erstwhile happiness of pure withdrawal each into his own discipline was now felt to be inadequate. Here and there a scholar broke through the barriers of his specialty and tried to advance into the terrain of universality. Some dreamed of a new alphabet, a new language of symbols through which they could formulate and exchange their new intellectual experiences.
Is the Game difficult to learn? Yes, but as you can see, its the only way:
The only way to learn the rules of this Game of games is to take the usual prescribed course, which requires many years; and none of the initiates could ever possibly have any interest in making these rules easier to learn.
While we were unable to offer you the "usual prescribed course" here, we did included a lot of instruction and reference material. The rest is up to you.
If you interested in finding out more about Hesse or The Glass Bead Game, please examine some of the following sites:
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